


blind eyes could blaze like meteors

by nebuloussubject



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Abuse, Therefore becomes an au where villanelle probs has more feelings than she really does, but also just went a lil wild at points enjoy, tried to follow canon by piecing together info from the show and novels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 04:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19124305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebuloussubject/pseuds/nebuloussubject
Summary: ‘do not go gentle into that good night.rage, rage against the dying of the light’She feels nothing and everything at once. A duality.





	blind eyes could blaze like meteors

**Author's Note:**

> hello! Have been thinking a lot about Villanelle’s backstory and why she makes the dumb dumb choices she does sometimes. So here’s a long-winded and Oh So Sad chat about all of that. 
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> A couple of lines and title from ‘do not go gentle into that good night’ by Dylan Thomas

The light always used to fall softly upon her face through the open window in her bedroom, she remembers the feeling of its warmth, the slight sting of heat upon her cheeks as she lay in her bed. She would lay there until her mother would gently prise open the door, whispering her name and asking if she was awake.

Sometimes, she would pretend to still be asleep so that her mother would walk over to her, her gentle fingers sliding through her long, blonde, sleep-tangled hair. Her sweet-coffee smell of the morning, asking her to wake up, that it was time for the day to start. And she would smile, she couldn’t help it, it was just theirs. So quiet and so alone, this morning ritual.

She would open her eyes and turn over to see her mother perching on the side of the bed, hair pulled back into a loose bun, and her robe pulled tight up to her neck to combat the biting cold of the morning. She would stand up, hand outstretched and Oksana would take it, pulling back the covers as they walked into the kitchen together.

The world felt soft then, muted around the edges and glowing, like a dream. And she supposes that it was, it was entirely possible that she had idealised it, that it wasn’t so simple, so loving. But she chooses to remember it that way, that way the memory of her mother doesn’t fade away, slowly seeping out of her consciousness. She lingers, and she feels her in glimpses of sunlight on her face, in gentle knocks on doors, in the feeling of fingers carding through her hair. She is there.

 

*

 

For a long time after her mother passed, Oksana’s home existed in dualities.

Cold and warm. Bright and dark. Fear and happiness. Comfort and unease.

Her father became haunted, and she supposes she did also. It felt wrong, staying in the house with just the two of them, but they remained there regardless. Sometimes he was kind and loving, mimicking the warmth that was missing, but it always felt just left of centre, like it didn’t quite fit.

She was too young to truly understand what it meant that her mother had gone, it took her a long while to realise. She supposes this was frustrating for her father, that it turned him into an angrier man. Having to explain to your child over and over again that their mother isn’t coming back must have hurt in more ways than Oksana could understand at the time.

So she was left alone more than she probably should have been.

Her father had his friends who he had to attend to, her would come home bruised and battered some days, and blindingly drunk the next. Oksana learned how to become small and invisible. Hiding away when the house was full of men who towered over her, knowing when it was the right time to ask for money for food, understanding that when it was her that was battered and bruised that her father didn’t mean it, he was just sad. Just sad. Don’t fight back. Just take it and don’t say a _fucking_ word.

Through it all, she grasped and clung onto small moments that floated in her peripheral vision like little beads of light. A hug here, a kind word, extra food in the fridge, her father’s mantra of, “It’s just you and me now, just you and me.”

It felt that way too, like there was little else in her existence. Just her father, the warmth, the fear, and pockets of absence where her mother used to be.

School was difficult at times, she was intelligent enough, she knew that, but she didn’t know how to let people in anymore. It always felt as thought people were going to disappear, and how people hid behind a curtain of kind to only turn around and betray themselves. She was 8 the first time she ever hurt somebody.

The boy stalked across the schoolyard with three other boys jogging behind him, his face was red and she could hear him indistinctly yelling at her, and before she knew it her lunch had been smacked out of her hand. Bread and cheese scattered across the concrete, and she immediately started to feel incredibly small. Her shoulders bowing as she could feel spittle from the boys mouth as he yelled in her ear, something about her father and his father and that she was going to fucking pay for it. She had no idea what this boy was talking about, but she took a tentative step back, away from the noise and the gathering crowd.

Before she knew it, the boy had pushed her back violently, she fell and skidded on the concrete, hands burning with grazes, she lifted them to see pinpricks of blood come to the surface. They were almost beautiful in their delicacy. She glanced up to see the boy coming towards her, and her instinct was to take it. Just to take it and to let it be over soon. That always works. But there was a glowing ember inside of her, something telling her that this was different, this boy meant nothing to her. She had nothing to lose.

And soon, that ember became a raging flame, licking at her gut and turning her eyes dark with its soot.

She kicked out a foot and caught the boy in the stomach, as he heaved out a breath, she reached into her bag and she grabbed her pencil. It was sharp and its lead glinted in the winter sunlight. She held it out in front of her, and though her hand shook she felt more sure than she had been in a long while.

 

*

 

Her head hung low as she stared at the dried blood on her palms, she could hear her principal telling her father that she was suspended, that if this were to happen again she would not be welcome back to the school.

The blood was now almost black, cracking at the seams. She winces as her father is told that the boy may lose function in one of his fingers. That the pencil went through a nerve. It’s all a bit of a blur, really.

The flakes of the blood fall to the ground as she begins to pick at them on the walk to the car. Her father’s hand comes down to enclose her own, and she looks up at him as he thanks her, that she was very brave to protect him like that.

She feels a surge of pride, it’s overwhelming and all-consuming. She feels it rattle around in her chest, like a ball on a string and it’s tied directly between them in that car.

 

*

 

She waited for two days for her father to come home. It becomes dark and light and dark and light again, perpetual motion and time constant.

A kind policewoman stays with her in the house until he is found, three days later with his throat cut and for show, a thin knife thrust through his hand.

She is 8 when she is orphaned.

Oksana does not wait long to bring it all to an end, or was it really a start?

The fire burns slowly at first, but it gains traction quickly. Engulfing the house, and she hears the father and son inside desperately trying to open the door, but it’s kept shut with wires from the outside. She feels nothing and everything at once. A duality.

 

*

 

Oksana finds strange comfort in the consistency of juvenile prison. She has her room, her wing, her seat in the cafeteria, her uniform, her regular guards. There is sweet bliss in always knowing what is coming next.

But she becomes bored with it after a time, and whilst it is still nice to always know what is next, she yearns for small pockets of freedom. She tires of seeing the same young, grey faces everyday and she tires of sitting in a room with a therapist asking her how she’s feeling that day, as if it was going to be entirely different than 24 hours prior.

The days blur together and Oksana begins to collect; facts and fallacies, and people and things. She feels safe when she has things, has resources at her disposal. The monotony of her days is broken by the silent stocktake she does of her surroundings, accounting for everything, down to every last cushion in the rec room lounge. She grows uneasy when there are things missing, or their colour has changed or someone got a haircut. It makes her feel like she is spinning, but she sits in silence and wishes it back to normal. She rarely yells or gets angry, but it simmers inside of her, gentle and persistent.

Her heart beats too fast the day she is released, and it’s stuck somewhere between anxiety and elation. The ground crunches beneath her feet and it’s too loud and too soft all at once, she wants it to be more and more and more, the Earth swallowing her up until it consumes her. It can never be enough. The door of the social worker’s car shuts forcefully behind her, and she leans her forehead against the glass. It’s been so long since she’s been in a car, her breath reaches higher up the frosted glass, and her feet plant themselves firmly on the floor instead of dangling. She feels stronger than she should at 13, if she keeps feeling it maybe she can convince herself that it’s true.

 

*

 

For the first time in her life, her home did not exist in dualities. It was strangely cold, and too loud, and too small for the monstrous amount of people in it. It was like juvie in its clinical chill, but the group home had no consistency. She felt like she was drowning most days. Everything was so different all the time. The revolving door of children, of social workers, of bedding, of clothes, of of of of.

She learns to lie, and it’s so easy and it makes her life glide along with little friction.

I promise, I absolutely did go to school today. Someone must be mistaken, because I was there.

No, I didn’t see Saveli try to hurt himself. I have no idea what happened.

She learns there was subtle power in conviction. If you believed it yourself, and if you said it with enough false honesty, a shine in your eye from tears you won’t shed, a crack in your voice with emotion you can’t feel, won’t let yourself feel. She found she could convince anyone of anything, everything from nothing. Oksana found quiet power within lies. It grated upon her at first, sat heavy in her stomach as the words fell out of her mouth. But after a while, she finds that she can gain far too much from it and they began to float out of her and cloud her thoughts until she wasn’t always entirely sure what was real and what was not.

She was obedient, and she was quiet. Unassuming and seemingly reliable. But she knew what she really was, what she was truly capable of and she was not going to give away any of it. That was for her. It was her pain and her struggles and her fire and her anger. She knew they were watching her closely, what she had done scared them.

But, my god did she yearn. For something to consume her so entirely that she felt small again, so she felt somewhere in between the warm sunlight in her face and the cold stare of her father’s eyes. But there was nothing in that home. There were too many people for the staff to care for, and she never caused trouble they knew about, so she was hardly ever going to grasp their attention. She feels insignificant, but not by choice, and she hates it more than she ever thought she could.

She starts secondary school when she is 15, and she feels part-ways invincible and entirely breakable. She steps into her languages classroom and her invincibility is vanished within minutes. The sun is streaming through the window on the opposite side of the room and her face is flushed with the winter heat, and the woman at the front of the room speaks softly and smells sweet and warm, like burnt sugar and cloves. Oksana drinks her in and she feels consumed, by what she does not know. But for the first time since she was much smaller, she feels safe and wanted and she desperately wishes for this to stay, so she can collect everything about these moments.

Oksana stays late and arrives early at school, begging her mind to erase the group home and the mess and the hoards of people from her memory. Replace it all with Anna. She learns to love languages as a conduit to Anna, she is greedy and monstrous for more of her time. She takes any crumb, any extra second, and it just makes her want and want and want. They speak in French, and Oksana devours textbooks and novels and steals French movies from the school library to get better for Anna. She dyes her hair dark because she feels innately changed, and the blonde reminds her too much of her past and it no longer feels beautiful, it feels weak. It’s all for Anna.

Once again, she exists in a life of dualities. On one hand she tries to dampen the intensity of what she is feeling, because it’s desperate and raw, and she knows that she is chasing something that she can’t get back. But on the other, the draw of safety and of nurture is too much, and Anna’s hands carding through her hair, and the hand around hers when she drives her home is too enticing. So she lets herself desperately want. And that’s the problem, Oksana always wanted more than she should have.

Her and Anna fuck for the first time when Oksana is 17, and it is blissful and earth-shattering and satisfying and not enough; all at once. She always needed more, she never found a point where she feels safe enough, in control enough.

 

*

 

Oksana can’t quite discern what makes her kill Max. It’s a little of everything. What he knew, what he could ruin, what he represents, and how he is everything that she was not. She felt so small next to him. Even as his wife writhed beneath her tongue, and whispered her name so softly that it felt holy. She felt forbidden in her own Eden, and it tore her apart that he knew that. So she killed him. She did not expect that Anna still loved him. And not only that, loved him more than she loved Oksana.

 

*

 

In prison she becomes hard. She is so angry, so confused, for such a long time. She does not understand, what they had was so _good_. She felt so safe and so wanted, and she knows Anna did too. She misses her smile and her touch and the warmth of her skin on hers. She sends her letters, starting off furious, because she is. Desperately so. But they quickly divulge into pleading, almost hysterical messes. It is not long after that, that they begin to be returned to her unopened and still.

So, Oksana becomes harder and closed, and promises herself that her wants are only that, things she may want. And she can have them, but there must be nothing else. She cannot yearn, and she cannot beg, and she cannot feel that small again without her own consent. It is no longer her that will feel insignificant, for the first time in her life she wanted to feel ginormous, that she can consume the world and everything in it and it will all be hers to have and to control. It makes her feel like steel, like she has resolved to never feel hurt again and that feels safe now, she can depend upon herself. No one else can do that for her.

In prison, she fucks ugly women, and beautiful women, and women that remind her of Anna, and those who could not get more different. She learns to feel nothing other than the physicality of the situation. She gets good at eating pussy, and even better at refusing it.

 

*

 

For three years she exists in a limbo that she has been condemned to for eternity. She had resolved to dying in that prison, having never loved or been loved ever again. It sits well with her, this isolation of emotions. It makes her feel in control and safe, even whilst she is being regimented to prison rules and the cascade of unattributed feelings that course through her but never reach the surface.

She meets with a man after she is placed in solitary for no reason she can figure out,she sits in on the bed and waits, eyes half open, twitching in the quiet. The door creaks open and shuts behind the man, his face is covered in a peppered black beard and his kind eyes are just hidden behind deep set bags. He speaks to her in Russian, quickly and quietly, and talks of espionage and killing those who deserve it, and preserving her talent. And he talks of her dying. Of her creating someone new, that doesn’t reek of the past and lingers in her memory. Someone entirely and blissfully new.

It does not take much to convince her to accept.

She is nearly 21 when she dies, in a fight apparently.

She deftly touches along the edges of her prison file, runs a finger over the date of death and smiles to herself. She hasn’t chosen a name yet, and the anonymity of herself is thrilling. She is no-one and everyone at once.

 

*

 

The training is much harder than expected and she feels lost and tired and nameless all of the time. She is paired with Nadia early on, and she accompanies her on kills and they have sex in luxurious hotels on satin sheets afterwards and they brunch in dingy cafes and high-class restaurants. She feels moments of comfort and ease in the short quick breaths they take together, and she feels herself begin to adapt. Like she always does.

It is not long until she is stronger and smarter and more reckless than she ever could have imagined, more than anyone could have imagined. She rages against herself and others and the people she kills, and the coming of the light of day.

She calls herself Villanelle.

 

*

 

Villanelle leaves Nadia’s side and begins to kill on her own, and it is far more satisfying than she could ever dreamed She does not feel pain as Nadia cries and yells, she remains stoic and unmoving as she rips her hand out of Nadia’s and walks out the door. She channels herself into the kills, and she is good at it. Finally, she is good and she is revered and she is _enough_.

She likes to stare into the eyes of those she kills, absorbing their life as it leaves them. It feels so powerful and electric, and she rides the highs like tsunamis. When they fade, she loses herself in clubs, dirty and full of bass and hair and fucking. For once Villanelle feels completely in control and it is beautiful. Her life is beautiful, full of beautiful places and things and people. She feels beautiful.

 

*

 

Villanelle attempts to exist on a separate plane to where her life really is, and she is at times aware of this. Other times she drifts through her chosen reality and ignores the rest. However, she is aware of her distinct brand of loneliness. As she is often alone and often lonely, but it is chosen, but it still aches when she lets it. She does not let it often.

Of course, Konstantin is often present, she sees him when it is deemed necessary. She is desperate for his approval and for his aloofness all at once, she hates and loves him whenever he returns to his own family. A family that is not her. But she knows this, but sometimes it aches.

It is still her resolve to maintain hardness, cold and with conviction. For the most part she does. She kills Nadia, she forgets her parents, she kills Bill mercilessly, she shoots Konstantin. She shoots Eve.

Not to kill, never to kill. How could she?

Villanelle knows, somewhere inside her that maintains its softness, that Eve understands. That Eve is the first person in a long time to see Villanelle, who sees Oksana. Who sees her, and actually _likes_ what she sees.

And for the first time that Villanelle can remember, there is nothing that Eve can provide to her that she needs. Anna gave her comfort, Nadia gave her security, all the other men and women gave her orgasms and a body. But Eve. Eve provides nothing except herself. Nothing except simple understanding, and Villanelle is on fire for it.

She wants that so badly. She wants to be warm and to be effortless and to exist in a reality that is concrete and unimagined. 

Villanelle walks slowly towards Eve’s body, she sees the blood starting to seep out from underneath her and hears Eve’s shallow breath against the sandstone. She tries to be hard, and she succeeds. Villanelle grimaces in her disappointment, in Eve but mostly in herself. She can’t exist in two worlds anymore, in a life of dualities. She has to pick one. So she walks away, self-assured and like steel.

 

*

 

_Do not go gentle into that good night_

_Rage, rage against the dying of the light_

 


End file.
